Lloyds Banking Group To Cut 4,960 Jobs In 2010: Reports

11/10/2009 9:55 AM ET

(RTTNews) - British bank Lloyds Banking Group Plc (LYG: News ,LLOY.L: News ) is reportedly eliminating 4,960 jobs during 2010. In a statement on its website, Lloyds TSB Group Union said three of the lender's five divisions - Insurance, Group Operations and Retail (Mortgages) - announced plans for further job reductions during 2010 as the Bank continues its drive to slash costs by GBP 1.5 billion a year by the end of 2011.

The statement said 1,188 jobs will be eliminated in the Insurance division. The combined Scottish Widows and Clerical Medical operations plan to remove 950 roles, whilst General Insurance plans to eliminate 238 jobs. The largest job reductions will come from Customer Service and IT areas.

In Group Operations, 2,814 jobs will become redundant during 2010, increasing the overall divisional job losses announced since the beginning of this year to 5,500, the statement noted. The division plans to focus its activities on fewer sites, thus effecting the job cut. It will pull out of 10 of the 20 sites affected.

According to reports, Retail Division has announced that 950 jobs will be made redundant during 2010, while redeployment would result in only 300 people losing jobs. The Mortgages business unit will be consolidating its activities in fewer sites, and pull out of some sites altogether.

In all the three divisions, no cuts will be done in jobs offshored to India, the union noted, adding that it was time to return jobs to the U.K.

Lloyds Banking Group was formed by the merger of Lloyds TSB and HBOS early this year. With the latest reports, the overall job reductions since the merger comes to over 15,000. Lloyds Banking is 43% owned by UK taxpayers. The company said last week that it was planning to raise GBP 21 billion of core capital and would sell 600 branches.

Unite the Union, another union, lambasted the job cuts stating that the Government cannot ''afford to continue to look the other way as hard-working families are punished in this manner.'' In a statement, Rob MacGregor, Unite national officer, said: "This Lloyds Banking Group announcement of 5,000 job losses demonstrates the depth of corporate arrogance within this taxpayer supported bank. This country's financial sector should be looking towards the future, rather then continuing to slash jobs without proper consideration of how to re-build the public's confidence in our tarnished banking sector.''

The Royal Bank of Scotland said last week that it plans to cut about 4000 jobs across UK.